Hot and Controversial - Colour Management

Ok, having spent weeks, if not months, trying to get my head around 'colour management' (not easy at my age), I wonder if the entire subject has been overly complicated by the *experts* in this field and whether it really is as important as it is made out to be - to the average user that is.
I'll start with 2 assumptions - please correct me if I'm completely off-base here: (a) the strength of any chain is measured by the strength of the *weakest link* and (b) the facility of allowing me to choose sRGB or Adobe RGB within my camera (Canon 30D) is irrelevant having set my camera to shoot RAW as this format does not have an associated in-camera colour profile.
Having downloaded the RAW images from the camera to my computer my first visual sighting of them is as appears on the monitor. Now the importance of having a correctly calibrated and profiled monitor is clear to me, and in fact is something that I have done using the EyeOne display2. So far so good, but here now is what I perceive as the *weakest link* in the entire setup because the colour gamut of your average monitor (mine can be considered average) has no wider gamut than sRGB, and this is a physical characteristic of the monitor - I can't change it even if I wanted to. I believe there are monitors that will display a larger gamut than this but they are in the region of several thousand pounds sterling - way beyond my reach. The same reasoning, to my way of thinking, can be applied to the printer. Even using the correct printer profile to match the ink and paper in use, the output to the printer is still rendered to something approaching the sRGB colour space in your average printer.
So, we come to the crunch. When in Lightroom (or Photoshop for that matter) I look at the colour preferences I read the following when clicking on sRGB, 'the sRGB colour space cannot encompass the full range of colours available within Lightroom'. Well that's all well and fine, but if my monitor is unable to display let's say the entire ProPhoto colour gamut what's the point in choosing this option anyway?
As mentioned previously, the weakest link in my setup is the monitor. Wouldn't I be far better off setting up my entire colour management workflow to reflect this weak link i.e. setting the working space in both Lightroom and Photoshop to sRGB. To me this at least would maintain consistency. Is my reasoning correct, are the *experts* really making this subject more complicated than necessary for the *average* user not having monitors and printers costing 'X' thousands of pounds or am I really missing something - not seeing the wood for the trees so to speak?

>the colour gamut of your average monitor (mine can be considered average) has no wider gamut than sRGB
Very true. Most current LCD screens have a smaller gamut than sRGB indeed. There are wider screens approaching aRGB, but they are expensive. They are worth their price though.
>Even using the correct printer profile to match the ink and paper in use, the output to the printer is still rendered to something approaching the sRGB colour space in your average printer.
untrue. Almost all printers use a CMYK type color space and often they have a few extra inks making it wider. CMYK can reproduce many colors that sRGB cannot, such as (obviously) saturated yellow, cyan, and magenta. aRGB encompasses more of these colors, but only ppRGB encompasses all of the colors even a cheap inkjet can produce.
>So, we come to the crunch. When in Lightroom (or Photoshop for that matter) I look at the colour preferences I read the following when clicking on sRGB, 'the sRGB colour space cannot encompass the full range of colours available within Lightroom'. Well that's all well and fine, but if my monitor is unable to display let's say the entire ProPhoto colour gamut what's the point in choosing this option anyway?
There is no color space setting in LR, so I am not sure what you are talking about. You can choose a colorspace upon export, but I have not seen that dialog before. In PS you can set it. The point is that the colors that are outside your monitor's gamut are often simply more saturated versions of the colors on your display. You simply want to be able to print them and not throw the data away to start with. LR has a philosophy of not throwing anything away until you export, print, etc. It always keeps the data and reinterprets all the way from the RAW every time you make a change. This also means converting to your monitor's color space, be it sRGB or other, for display.
>are the *experts* really making this subject more complicated than necessary for the *average* user
? There are no shortcuts in getting correct color. Color vision is a rather complex problem. That said, getting correct color on the screen and on your output is not hard at all. LR makes color management extremely simple by not even giving you a confusing dialog such as PS does. On the Mac, this is completely transparant and on windows, the default sRGB monitor profile should get most people close enough. Most problems in color management come from people setting up PS incorrectly, or doing a half-baked monitor calibration. Also there is a widespread problem in bad printer drivers and bad printer color profiles. It also doesn't help that the most widespread browser is
color-stupid.

Similar Messages

How do I fix colour picker to work across different colour-managed monitors?

Hey everyone!
I'm assuming this problem I'm having stems from having colour-calibrated monitors, but let me know if I'm wrong!
To preface, this is the setup I have:
Windows 7
3 monitors as follows, all have individual colour profiles calibrated using the Spyder 3
Cintiq 12WX
Dell U2410
Dell 2409WFP
Photoshop CS6 - Proofed with Monitor RGB, and tested with colour-managed and non-colour-managed documents
I usually do most of my work on the Cintiq 12WX, but pull the photoshop window to my main monitor to do large previews and some corrections. I noticed that the colour picker wouldn't pick colours consistently depending on the monitor the Photoshop window is on.
Here are some video examples:
This is how the colour picker works on my Dell U2410: http://screencast.com/t/lVevxk5Ihk
This is how it works on my Cintiq 12WX: http://screencast.com/t/tdREx4Xyhw9
Main Question
I know the Cintiq's video capture makes the picture look more saturated than the Dell's, but it actually looks fine physically, which is okay. But notice how the Cintiq's colour picker doesn't pick a matching colour. It was actually happening the opposite way for a while (Dell was off, Cintiq was fine), but it magically swapped while I was trying to figure out what was going on. Anyone know what's going on, and how I might fix it?
Thanks for *any* help!
Semi-related Question regarding Colour Management
Colour management has always been the elephant-in-the-room for me when I first tried to calibrate my monitors with a Spyder colourimeter years ago. My monitors looked great, but Photoshop's colours became unpredictable and I decided to abandon the idea of calibrating my monitors for years until recently. I decided to give it another chance and follow some tutorials and articles in an attempt to keep my colours consistent across Photoshop and web browsers, at least. I've been proofing against monitor colour and exporting for web without an attached profile to keep pictures looking good on web browsers. However, pictures exported as such will look horrible when uploaded to Facebook. Uploading pictures with an attached colour profile makes it look good on Facebook. This has forced me to export 2 versions of a picture, one with an attached colour profile and one without, each time I want to share it across different platform. Is there no way to fix this issue?
Pictures viewed in Windows Photo Viewer are also off-colour, but I think that's because it's not colour managed... but that's a lesser concern.

I think I've figured out the colour management stuff in the secondary question, but the weird eyedropper issue is still happening. Could just be a quirk from working on things across multiple monitors, but I'm hoping someone might know if this is a bug/artifact.
Going to lay out what I inferred from my experiments regarding colour management in case other noobs like me run into the same frustrations as I did. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong - the following are all based on observation.
General Explanation
A major source of my problems stem from my erroneous assumption that all browsers will use sRGB when rendering images. Apparently, most popular browsers today are colour-managed, and will use an image's embedded colour profile if it exists, and the monitor's colour profile if it doesn't. This was all well and good before I calibrated my monitors, because the profile attached to them by default were either sRGB or a monitor default that's close to it. While you can never guarantee consistency on other people's monitors, you can catch most cases by embedding a colour profile - even if it is sRGB. This forces colour-managed browsers to use sRGB to render your image, while non-colour-managed browsers will simply default to sRGB. sRGB seems to be the profile used by Windows Photo Viewer too, so images saved in other wider gamut colour spaces will look relatively drab when viewed in WPV versus a colour-managed browser.
Another key to figuring all this out was understanding how Profile Assignment and Conversion work, and the somewhat-related soft-proofing feature. Under Edit, you are given the option to either assign a colour profile to the image, or convert the image to another colour profile. Converting an image to a colour profile will replace the colour profile and perform colour compensations so that the image will look as physically close to the original as possible. Assigning a profile only replaces the colour profile but performs no compensations. The latter is simulated when soft-proofing (View > Proof Colors or ctrl/cmd-Y). I had followed bad advice and made the mistake of setting up my proofing to Monitor Color because this made images edited in Photoshop look identical when the same image is viewed in the browser, which was rendering my images with the Monitor's colour profile, which in turn stemmed from yet another bad advice I got against embedding profiles . This should formally answer Lundberg's bewilderment over my mention of soft-proofing against Monitor Colour.
Conclusion and Typical Workflow (aka TL;DR)
To begin, these are the settings I use:
Color Settings: I leave it default at North American General Purpose 2, but probably switch from sRGB to AdobeRGB or ProPhoto RGB so I can play in a wider gamut.
Proof Setup: I don't really care about this anymore because I do not soft-proof (ctrl/cmd-Y) in this new workflow.
Let's assume that I have a bunch of photographs I want to post online. RAWs usually come down in the AdobeRGB colour space - a nice, wide gamut that I'll keep while editing. Once I've made my edits, I save the source PSD to prep for export for web.
To export to web, I first Convert to the sRGB profile by going to Edit > Convert to Profile. I select sRGB as the destination space, and change the Intent to either Perceptual or Relative Colorimetric, depending on what looks best to me. This will convert the image to the sRGB colour space while trying to keep the colours as close to the original as possible, although some shift may occur to compensate for the narrower gamut. Next, go to Save for Web. The settings you'll use:
Embed Color Profile CHECKED
Convert to sRGB UNCHECKED (really doesn't matter since you're already in the sRGB colour space)
and Preview set to Internet Standard RGB (this is of no consequence - but it will give a preview of what the image will look like in the sRGB space)
That's it! While there might be a slight shift in colour when you converted from AdobeRGB to sRGB, everything from then on should stay consistent from Photoshop to the browser
Edit: Of course, if you'd like people to view your photos in glorious wide gamut in their colour-managed browsers, you can skip the conversion to sRGB and keep them in AdobeRGB. When Saving for Web, simply remember to Embed the Color Profile, DO NOT convert to sRGB, and set Preview to "Use Document Profile" to see what the image would look like when drawn with the embedded color profile

My problem is that after printing the first photo or picture, when I come to print a second, both the Colour Management and Epson Colour Controls are greyed out and showing No Colour Management

I have recently purchased a Mac computer (updated to Maverick) to go with my Epson Stylus Photo RX500 printer which has given excellent service with my old Windows computer. However, when trying to print pictures or photos via Photoshop Elements 11, the best results I can get are using the Colour Management and Epson Colour controls in the printing options box.
My problem is that after printing the first photo or picture, when I come to print a second, both the Colour Management and Epson Colour Controls are greyed out and showing No Colour Management, The only way I can reset the controls is to shut down the printer and computer and restart.
Could there may be a setting somewhere that I need to adjust please? I have been in touch with Epson and they say that the Epson Colour controls are part of the Photoshop Elements software but a post on the Adobe forum brought no results and I am unable to contact Adobe.
<Edited by Host>

Hello Garry. Thanks for the reply. I guess I should have used a different title from "How do I post a question?" That should come after trying to resolved the colour settings first. However, to answer your question, after experimenting with all the different settings in Photoshop Elements and Epson software, I now start with PSE11 Colour settings then click "no colour management" then after clicking Print, I choose "More Options/Colour Management/Colour Handling/Printer Manages Colour" then I choose "Page Setup/Layout/Colour Matching" which then shows Epson Colour Controls but I also choose "Layout/Colour Management" which then shows "Colour Controls/Mode" I then of course choose an Epson printer profile depending on the paper I am using. I get good results but as I said, the Colour Matching and Colour Controls are then greyed out. Hope that makes sense.

Relationship between the Koren Colour Management Model and PSE11

I would like to relate the settings I apply to colour printing in PSE11 to the general model of Colour Management, in particular that described by Norman Koren(see his Papers on the internet). Then I will better understand what I am doing.
I have an Epson printer and the driver contains the paper profiles for Epson papers.
In principle, the Koren Model shows each device(camera image, monitor and printer) is linked through its Colour Engine(with the device profile infeed) to the central Image Working Colour Space.
The PSE11 controls are:
1. Printer Settings(through the Windows printer menus)
2. Colour Management (through Edit->Colour Management, and
3. Printer settings(through the File->print screens).
1 and 3 are clearly associated with the printer. What happens when I select the options in 3? Am I modifying the paper profiles?
Is there any control over the central Image Working Space? Is the Koren Model more complicated than the PSE11 Model?
I know Colour Management can get very complicated - but I hope to find an explanation that will help an amateur photographer!
Grateful for any help.

The menu edit / color management defines which color space will be used internally by Elements to record the edits which change the RGB values of pixels. A correct choice will insure a correct rendition on a calibrated display.
Several cases :
- the photo file is tagged for a specific color space. Then, if Elements can work internally with that color space, it uses it for the calculations. Contrary to common belief, Elements can work internally with other spaces than sRGB or aRGB. Lightroom users can easily check that a Prophoto tagged image can be processed in Elements. The picture is correctly displayed and when you 'save as' the checkbox for color space, it is in Prophoto RGB.
- The photos are not tagged : that's where the options to 'optimize' for sRGB come into play. The internal working space will be assigned to the photo : sRGB to optimize for screen, aRGB to optimize for print.
- Another situation : raw files. Raw data don't have a color space. They simply record the 'brightness' of the light gathered under the RGB filters. The correct 'white balance' and color space are defined in the conversion process. In the ACR module of Elements, there is no dialog for you to choose between sRGB or aRGB. The settings in your camera are ignored. Instead, ACR reads your choice for optimization in that edit / color menu. The conversion menu adopts the color space in that menu.
So, that menu is mainly to define which color space will be chosen as 'working space' and what to do if that color space is not yet defined in the file metadata header.
The printer and paper color settings are not taken into account here, only in the print module.
Edit:
I forgot to mention that the same edit / color menu is there to provide ways to convert to another color space (converting the RBG values, not only assigning a color space tag).

Colour Management Issue with PS CS3 and Leopard 10.5.2

Hi Everyone,
Since I have installed Leopard I am having colour management issues with Photoshop CS3 and my Canon i9950 printer.
My screen is calibrated with a Spyder and I used to ask Photoshop (in 10.4.11) to manage colour when printing and used the Spyder profile. Everything came out as I saw it on screen.
Now in leopard when I do the same thing everything comes out too yellow on the print. If I ask Photoshop to let the printer manage the colour it is too red. If I use the default colour management (photoshop managing the colour and it choosing the colour space it is better, but still too yellow).
Photoshop gives the hint to turn off colour management in the printer but there is no option for this and it also said the same thing before of course (when it worked in 10.4.11).
Any ideas?
Thanks.

>It was working perfectly in Tiger with the monitor profile.
You were lucky.
the monitor profile is so Photoshop can display your images correctly.
the working space is Adobe RGB, sRGB, BruceRGB, ect... these are all known color spaces so when the file goes to another computer there is a consistent color space for reference. If you use your monitor profile as a working space then nobody else knows what is going on with your file.
when you print you need to use the printer profile for the type of paper you are printing on this is supplied by the printer manufacturer. you can also have custom profiles made.
you need to read up on color management:
http://www.gballard.net/psd.html
http://digitaldog.net/

Colour Management issue With Leopard and PS CS3

Hi Everyone,
Since I have installed Leopard I am having colour management issues with Photoshop CS3 and my Canon i9950 printer.
My screen is calibrated with a Spyder and I used to ask Photoshop (in 10.4.11) to manage colour when printing and used the Spyder profile. Everything came out as I saw it on screen.
Now in leopard when I do the same thing everything comes out too yellow on the print. If I ask Photoshop to let the printer manage the colour it is too red. If I use the default colour management (photoshop managing the colour and it choosing the colour space it is better, but still too yellow).
Photoshop gives the hint to turn off colour management in the printer but there is no option for this and it also said the same thing before of course (when it worked in 10.4.11).
Any ideas?
Thanks.

You need to use the correct printer profile for the paper you're using. If the printer didn't come with any pre-built profiles, check Canon's web site to see if they have any profiles available for your printer that you can download.
Printer profiles are very specific. You can't take take a profile for glossy Epson paper and expect it to work very well for Canon glossy paper.

Colour Management Issues with Leopard and Photoshop CS3

Hi Everyone,
Since I have installed Leopard I am having colour management issues with Photoshop CS3 and my Canon i9950 printer.
My screen is calibrated with a Spyder and I used to ask Photoshop (in 10.4.11) to manage colour when printing and used the Spyder profile. Everything came out as I saw it on screen.
Now in leopard when I do the same thing everything comes out too yellow on the print. If I ask Photoshop to let the printer manage the colour it is too red. If I use the default colour management (photoshop managing the colour and it choosing the colour space it is better, but still too yellow).
Photoshop gives the hint to turn off colour management in the printer but there is no option for this and it also said the same thing before of course (when it worked in 10.4.11).
Any ideas?
Thanks.

I'm having exactly the same problem, only my printer is a Canon Pixma iX4000. The colour is all bleached out, it looks exactly like when you've accidentally printed an RGB file on a CMYK printer, and at first I thought that was what I had done, but it isn't. This is very frustrating, I've spent all day going through the manuals, recalibrating etc, but no luck. This is a brand new Mac Pro and printer, but if its not going to print what I see on screen it's just expensive junk.
I wasn't sure if the problem was Leopard or the printer or CS3...

Colour management between creative suite and iPad/iOS

Does anyone have any insight into colour management for imagery between creative suite and iPad/iOS. ? i.e using the appropriate Proof set up across indesign/photoshop/bridge to as close as you can mimic what you will see on the iPad?
We're seeing quite radical differences from what we shoot in our studio (which is consistent on all our screens across the studio) to what we see on uploading to iPad. How can we best mimic the iPad colour space?

This post in the Ideas forum might be of some use.

WARNING: Canon Pro Printers and CS4 – Serious Colour Management Issue

Over the last four days (and over fifty prints) I have undertaken extensive and meticulous tests to identify the cause of a problem; namely that targets for profiling a new printer (a Canon Pro9000), printed with ‘no colour management’, were printing far too dark and with what appeared to be a colour cast.
I have conclusively eliminated the printer, the printer drivers, the Mac OS, corrupted preference files, corrupted user accounts, incorrect Photoshop settings, incorrect printer driver settings, the ‘sticky settings' issue, and user error as possible causes of the problem.
I can say with 95% certainty that my tests, conducted using Mac OSX 10.4.11, have proved the following:
That, printing to a Canon Pro9000 or iP4500, Photoshop CS4 does not print accurate targets suitable for producing profiles. This applies to both the No Colour Management (NCM) and the Printer Manages Colour (PMC) settings.
Photoshop CS and CS2 are not effected.
I did not test CS3.
Furthermore, colour managed prints (using the same accurate profile made in CS2), printed in CS2 and CS4, show subtle differences. This may not be an issue except in the most critical applications.
It is likely that the problem will not be confined to the two Canon printers above since many other Canon printers share the same driver architecture.
Reading posts and discussions on other websites would seem to indicate that this problem is also manifest with some Epson printers and may also effect Mac OSX 10.5.
I have to conclude, therefore, that Photoshop CS4 cannot be replied upon to print targets of sufficient accuracy to produce reliable profiles for a colour managed workflow.
The fact that this is only just being reported can be attributed to four factors:
That many CS4 users are continuing to use profiles made under older versions of Photoshop and have yet to make new profiles using CS4.
Some users may not immediately notice a problem, or may ascribe it to other causes.
Some users may take the line of least resistance and use a previous version of Photoshop to work around the problem.
Some users are still using the older versions of Photoshop not effected.
Eric Chan (of Adobe) has stated on another website that CS4 implemented some new APIs for printing and that this has given rise to some "minor glitches". If Eric Chan is correct, and Adobe changed the APIs in Photoshop CS4, this begs question of whether Adobe sufficiently tested CS4 before release ? If Adobe did not test their software, and therefore failed to identify this critical problem, this would suggest negligence on Adobe’s part. If Adobe identified the problem but then did not inform users that a potentially serious colour management issue existed this would suggest wilful or gross negligence.
It is not good enough to say that Adobe simply followed the ‘conventional’ path and ‘followed the rules’ regarding API implementation. The experience of end users does not correspond to a “minor glitch” and, in my case, has been extremely costly in terms of time (over five days in all), lost revenues, and materials. Furthermore, why should Adobe's customers be forced to use their valuable time diagnosing problems clearly of Adobe's creation – and actually admitted.
In UK law providers of goods and services (and this includes software) have to supply them as “fit for purpose”. Clearly, in terms of colour management, CS4 is not fit for purpose. Neither can Adobe hide behind its labyrinthine licensing terms since any exclusions would be ruled unlawful under the UK’s ‘Unfair Contract Terms’ Act.
My strong and unequivocal recommendation is that representatives from Adobe, Apple, and the printer manufacturers meet together – with the utmost urgency – and provide a rapid and complete solution. It is simply not good enough to pass this ‘over the wall’ saying “it’s not our problem”. It is. Adobe's, Apple's, and the printer manufacturers'. Please solve it. And quickly.
Identify the problem clearly, make it and the solution/s public; and publicise it widely and thoroughly.

Dear DYP.
Thank you for your concern.
"What fixes have you tried?"
If I may quote from my post above:
"I have conclusively eliminated the printer, the printer drivers, the Mac OS, corrupted preference files, corrupted user accounts, incorrect Photoshop settings, incorrect printer driver settings, the ‘sticky settings' issue, and user error as possible causes of the problem.
I can say with 95% certainty that my tests, conducted using Mac OSX 10.4.11, have proved the following:
That, printing to a Canon Pro9000 or iP4500, Photoshop CS4 does not print accurate targets suitable for producing profiles. This applies to both the No Colour Management (NCM) and the Printer Manages Colour (PMC) settings.
Photoshop CS and CS2 are not effected.
I did not test CS3"
These tests took place over three weeks and involved over five days of work and the replacement of the printer on Canon's recommendation (although the printer is clearly not at fault).
Please note that I am using Mac OSX 10.4.11.
"What driver versions are you using?"
Pixma iP4500 6.9.3 (also 6.9.1, 6.9.2 and the driver supplied on the CD).
Pro 9000 4.8.7 (also 4.7.3, 4.8.4 and the driver supplied on the CD).
"Yes it is frustrating but in a lot of cases it is fixable as I and others have clear reported, on this and the LR forums."
I have not found any fix on any website referring to Canon printers, despite exhaustive searches (this includes Canon's European and US websites which are mute on the issue).
The ReadMe file supplied with the installation disc of CS4 refers to problems with "some Canon printers" when printing with the 'Printer Manages Color' but does not identify using 'No Color Management' nor Epson printers as having issues.
I hope this post answers your questions.
Clearly all users of CS4 need to be warned of this problem which is likely to effect other printers. I believe that I am assisting others by issuing this warning. It is done, not to cause mischief, but in the spirit of a public service. CS4 users can then treat their printing results from CS4 with caution, and then conduct their own tests. I have presented a workaround which is to use a prior version of CS4.

A Colour Management tutorial from an amateur

Archiving at the end of a long project I came across a document I assembled at the start when I wanted to teach myself about colour management. I spent several weeks reading, experimenting and putting together these notes, but it all came to nought. To quote from the notes:
…I chose not to use colour management when printing my books on a Xerox iGen3. I converted the InDesign files to PDF with all colour management turned off, and asked the printer to print ‘direct’. The iGen RIP converted RGB images to CMYK, and CMYK images were printed as per the colour numbers. Using certain colour settings for my monitor, and for Photoshop and InDesign, I was able to obtain a very close match between what was on screen and what was on paper without the need for profiles…
I've asked a fair few questions here over the years, and this forum has been a great help, but I rarely offer anything in return. Well, here's a little something that some people might find useful. A mob of information about colour management, collated from various sources with my tuppence worth here and there to make it flow. It was put together before my InDesign days when I used Pages, so forgive the mediocre layout.
Colour Management (450k) can be downloaded here: http://www.mediafire.com/?86edp6742ac6zlv (If Peter Spier is reading this: Peter, that's a hot link now; I've upgraded my Mediafire account so there are no more banners).
If anyone visits here in the future and that link doesn't work (which will happen if I upload a new version), try this one, a link to the folder: http://www.mediafire.com/?an9n0o36nymwv
Please let me know if there are any gross errors in the PDF and I'll fire up Pages and correct them.

geoffseeley, Welcome to the discussion area!
1) amber light keeps flashing but internet works - is this a problem?
I believe that indicates that you do not have wireless encryption enabled. If you enabled wireless encryption, the light should turn green.
3) how does iTunes work through the extreme box? am i supposed to plug my home cinema into the extreme box somehow?
The AirPort Extreme base station (AEBS) has no special features to support video/audio directly. iTunes has nothing to do with the AEBS.
The AirPort Express (AX) has an audio out port for streaming music from iTunes.

ACPU disables printer driver colour management; how?

Having developed a printing app for Mac Large Format Printers which uses its own CMM, I am finding it increasingly difficult to print natively, so without color management applied to it outside my App.
Before, drivers had an option to set the simulation to None, which would make the printer use the entire gamut available.
Now (I believe from OS 10.9.6 and up), this option has been taken out of the HP Designjet PCL drivers, and no longer works properly for RGB in HP designjet PS drivers.
Adobe Color Printer Utility (ACPU) allows for targets to be printed correctly. It works great. But as my App has its own CMM, it needs to be able to print natively using the drivers.
My question is; is there an API or documentation on how to make your mac App tell the driver not to do colour management, just like ACPU does?
Or can you make Cups to this by setting a Cups option?
Currently, only Adobe Apps like PhotoShop can do this.
I understand that Adobe will suggest that using Adobe software is a good idea (which it is) but the App I made goes way beyond normal printing functionality offered in these applications and offers hot folders, automatic custom page size definition droplet actions, canvas border creation, nesting, printer load sharing etc. etc.
Any help/information would be very very very much appreciated.
Boudewijn Krijger
ColorPlaza

The behavior in screen capture two with the two radio buttons grayed out is correct. You cannot turn off color management anyway. The magenta cast is another problem.

Mini-DVI to S-video adapter and no colour on TV screen

I just purchased a mini-DVI to S-video adapter for my MacBook. I want to connect it to my TV through my DVD/Video player.
I do get a nice picture on the TV and I can manage it in the screen settings panel, BUT the TV-screen doesn't show any colour, just black and white. Why?
I've tried several settings in the Preferences panel, but no luck. What to do?

The cable is brand new and I've checked it with a mulitmeter. It's OK.
I've also heard that this is a fairly common problem with S-video and I got a tip to try the composite video instead. It worked beautifully, so now I've got nice and crisp video in full colour on my TV!

Colour Management - who does what - Some thoughts now the smoke is clearing

First up, thanks very much to everyone who contributed their ideas and expertise to my recent query here, when I was seeking help for a problem with colour management issues when printing a magazine I edit. I have a ton of suggestions to work through and study but the smoke is slowly clearing and it raises some interesting points which I think are worth recounting.
First of all, I have been editing short run magazines now for 25 years, at first part time and later on a professional contract basis. I am not a trained graphic designer nor a trained printer. I did start out training as a graphic designer, many years ago but gave it up for a career in IT (as a networking specialist). That was full time until 10 years ago, although I did some freelance writing and editing in my spare time.
And yes, I did start originally with scissors and cut and paste, and moved on through black and white with spot colour and Pagemaker software to full colour and InDesign today. One thing which may be different about my experience to most of yours is that I am a PC user and always have been. All my editing and graphics work has always been done on a PC - Pagemaker was our DTP package of choice for a long time and we supplemented this with Corel-Draw (which has a range of graphics handling options). All my software is legal and I always register it and keep it up to date. I have used the same graphic designer for quite a few years now and whenever we upgrade our software he goes and gets trained on the latest release.
Around 10 years ago I was offered the chance to edit a specialist short run magazine (not the current one). This was a chance I took and gave up the day job and became a full time freelance. Editing is not my main or only source of income. I am also a freelance writer and photographer and heritage consultant and I have a specialist image library.   I sell my own sell my work - articles and pictures - to the national and local press. I also write books (non fiction) on commission. The magazine editing is really an extension of my interest in historic landscapes. I have never had any complaints, or problems, with the freelance work, photos and archived images I sell. Clients include national newspapers here in the UK, national magazine groups and my books are available in national bookstore chains. I supply my work digitally, naturally, and it includes photos I have taken myself and items which I have scanned into my library of historical images and store on line. No reported colour management issues there.
I have always enjoyed a good relationship with my publishers and printers because I seek to be as professional as possible, which means delivering my stuff on time, to the required standard so that minimum intervention is required from them. This does assume that I have a clear brief from them on what they need from me.
Recently this approach has not been enough to avoid colour management issues with the short run magazine I currently edit. I have been wondering when and where things went astray and date it back to the upgrade to InDesign two years ago. However it may have its roots in my earlier decision to use PCs not Macs for my work.
Until 4 years ago I had used the same printers for magazine editing for many years. They were a well respected firm specialising in short run magazines. They were not far from where I live and work and if there was a problem I would go over and discuss it with them. They were happy, and competent, to handle Pagemaker files generated on a PC and convert my rgb images to cmyk if there was any concern about the colour balance. On a few occasions I paid them to scan a photo for me. However 4 years ago the owner decided to retire and shut up shop. I needed to find a new printers and it had to be someone who specialised in short run magazines and could meet the budget of the charity I edit for. Also someone who could handle copy generated using Pagemaker running on a PC. I chose a printers I had used briefly in the past where I knew some of the staff and was promised PC based Pagemaker would not be a problem. I even got this in writing. I started to send them proofs generated using Pagemaker v7 on my PC.
I soon found that although they had agreed they could handle Pagemaker on a PC in fact they had only a few PC based clients and were using a single ageing PC running Pagemaker to proof their work. In fact nearly all their jobs were Quark based. I was also told we had to supply CMYK images although not given any further requirement so I now did the conversions from rgb to CMYK using my PhotoPaint software. (There are quite a few settings in Corel for the conversion but there was no guidance by the printer on which to use so to be honest it did not occur to me that it might be a problem).
Now of course I understand that the drive to get customers to supply CMYK images was a Quark driven requirement back in the late 1990s. I did not and do not use Quark so knew nothing for this. I did have some early colour problems and font incompatibilities with the new printers and was pressured by their senior Graphic Designer (who designed for their own contract clients) to upgrade to InDesign and provide them with a .pdf, which I was assured would solve all my problems. The .pdf would be the same as the final printed magazine because "it would not require any further intervention by the printers".
I expect you are collectively throwing up your hands in horror at this point, but I think he was speaking genuinely. The creation of a .pdf using InDesign, is widely promoted as the ultimate answer to all printing issues.   I have encountered it recently with a lot of printers' salesmen and my friend, who edits a learned journal, has just been told the same thing by her printers, to get her to upgrade to ID. Incidentally she also uses a PC.
So we upgraded our design process in house to InDesign and our graphic designer went on a course, two courses in fact. When we came to produce our first .pdf using ID, the printers' Senior Graphic designer came on the phone and talked our designer through the ID Export function. I think he may at that time have told him to create a preset profile with MPC and the defaults, but to be honest I don't recall. We were never sent anything in writing about what settings we needed to match theirs. I continued to have intermittant colour management problems but put this down to my photos. Things came to head with the most recent issue where the colours were badly out on the cover, supplied by a press agency and taken by a professional photographer. The printers seemed to have little or no idea about possible causes.
Initially I thought that part of the underlying cause must lie in some mismatch between what I was sending the printers and what they expected to receive so I asked them to specify what I should send. All they said was use Profile preset as MPC setting and accept the defaults which accompany it.
So I came on here looking for a solution. A lot of people were keen to offer their own experience which I really appreciate. However the messages could be conflicting. Some of you suggested it was the underlying cover photo which was at fault, some that it was my monitor which needed better calibration.
Many of you here said that part of the problem, if not the whole problem, was the way I was generating my CMYKs for the printer and I should use Photoshop to do this. You also mentioned a number of possible colour management settings which I should try.
At times the advice seemed to change tack. There were suggestions that the colour management issues I had were nothing to do with the printers, that it was up to me not them. Quite a lot of you said I needed to be better informed about Colour Management issues. I agree, but I had never had any previously (maybe good luck, maybe good support from my previous printer) so I was not even aware that I needed to be better informed. Some of you mildly chastised me for not finding out more and doing more to manage my own colour management with the switch to ID. To which I can only say if I had needed to train up, I would have done. I did not realise I needed to. Nor was my designer aware of the issues as colour management was not really covered on his ID courses which were about typesetting and design.
Some of you even seemed to hint that unless I was prepared to use an expensive high end printer or effectively retrain as a print specialist or get my graphic designer to do so, then I probably shouldn't be in the magazine editing game at all. OK maybe that is a bit harsh but you get the drift.
The fact is that printing is much more accessible these days to all sorts of people and in particular to people with PCs. My brother lives in a large village in an isolated area and produces a village magazine which has been a great success. It is in black and white with spot colour but he would like to move to an all colour issue. He is a bit nervous of the colour management issues as he has no experience of graphic design and is his own designer using a low end entry level design package. He too uses a PC. The printers reps all tell him the same thing they tell me, that all he needs to supply is a .pdf using InDesign.
Somewhere I feel a black hole has developed, maybe back in the 1990s with Quark 4.11. A lot of printers standardised on that, and set up a work flow and prepress dependent on CMYK images as provided by the clients. They assumed the the clients would doing their own colour management. This approach also assumes everyone is using Quark on a Mac with the full range of Adobe software. When it became possible to generate .pdfs using InDesign, this was held out to users as the Holy Grail of magazine printing, even though their workflows and prepress were still based on Quark 4.11 principles. Any underlying colour management issues the clients now have to tackle themselves.
So now we have the situation in which I find myself, having to learn from scratch a good deal about colour management issues so that I can tell the printers what is needed for my magazine. Meanwhile all the printing salesmen, the ones I encounter anyway, are still busy pushing the InDesign to .pdf as the "be all and end all" solution. Some re-education is needed for all parties I think.

I am glad to see that the sun is peeping through the clouds.
I apologise for my Aussie-style straight talk earlier, but as I said before it was not directed personally at you but in the direction of others whom you epitomize, repeating a conversation I have had many times over the last 10 years or so where respectable, well-meaning photographers, designers and other contributors refuse to accept that colour management is being thrust upon them.
It is a simple fact of life, there is this 'new' thing that has butted into the very root of our trades and changed the most basic principles of printing and photography. We expect that this kind of thing does not happen but the industry we now work in is not the same one we trained in twenty years ago.
Many printers are still struggling with the same conflict, so many tradespeople cannot accept this change.
This is exacerbated by the fact that colour management is so complicated to learn and implement and confounded by the fact that the default settings and a clumsy workflow often yield acceptable results with incorrect, generic settings, hence the old 'use InDesign and make a PDF and it will be ok' route.
When the chain of colour management includes the photographer, the photographer's client, the designer, the other designer maybe, the prepress person, and the platemaker, and a single incorrect click by any one of those can kill the CM it is not surprising that in the end when someone is looking back to see where it fell over they usually never find out.....   They will meet someone who says ' I never touched it, I simply opened the file and scaled it and closed it'. And that person will be a reputable photographer or designer (and CLIENT) who has no idea they just broke it. So what do we do? We go with the generic setting that seems to yield adequate results therefore avoiding the confrontation.
You need to understand the situation of the printer who took his business through the 'early' days of colour management, we had all kinds of very reputable sources supplying incorrect files, we did not have the expertise yet to be able to address the entire workflow, it would have meant training photographers and designers all through the best design houses and national institutions, because they blamed the printer. Only in the last few years have I seen these people coming around to the fact that they bear responsibility for implementing their own cm and maintaining it through their own work.
Sadly, many high end sources are still not there, and I mean HIGH end! Probably the ones that don't even visit this forum because they want to keep blaming the printer... They tend to live with the poor quality reproductions and just pull up the worst ones and fiddle with those and try to avoid the 'elephant in the room'.
I am sorry to say that it was not practical for a printer to reject mismanaged files for fear of losing clients who would happily accept less than perfect results in order to avoid the painful truth that was being told to them. The best thing we could do was to gently make those clients aware that their workflow was imperfect and hope to show them how we could help... Many print shops do not have someone knowledgeable enough or patient enough to do this, or the boss does not understand the issue either and tries to work around it to keep his jobs flowing in the expectation that all those experts in the chain will eventually tame the thing.
The many experts on this holy forum are waaaaayyyy ahead of the printing industry in general and photographers and designers in general in their understanding of colour management workflow. I have seen first hand how reputable local industry people and trainers alike are spreading misinformation and bad techniques, when I discovered these forums back in about 2002 I found that they opened up a whole new galaxy of knowledge and facts that actually worked and made sense, unlike what I had been told locally.... This forum taught me what the Adobe text books did not, the Tech' teachers did not, local 'experts' did not!
I tell all interested people to join these forums and learn to discriminate between the good and bad information.

Deleted Colour Setting in Bridge, but Photoshop wants to Colour Manage every time I open a file.

I installed a Colour Setting in Bridge as per a printer's instructions. After I did this, every time I open something in Ps, It asks if it can colour manage the file and gives a few options. I deleted a Creative Suite Colour Setting from finder Bridge, but Photoshop still generates the popup every time. This interferes with Scripts in Ps and it's very annoying.

Deleting something in Bridge certainly won't help.
Change the color settings in Photoshop...

Pls help - colour management suite does not activate

Have the following problem with the bridge colour management properties opening:-
am in Bridge CS4-
inside dropdown menu "creative suite-colour management"
photoshop and illustrator are installed and in use
I cannot open this menu section as I get the following error code:-
This is my translation of the german as I have a german system - suite only possible when one of these programs have been started and in use.
So I cannot start this programm section, pls let me know what I can do. Both my programs ahve been started and have been used more than once.
Thks for the help, the adobe people cannot help me

Hi Omke,
Tryed both, start up scripts for AI and PS are activated and I also tryed to
refresh teh preferences as explained below....
Seams to be a bigger probleme.
Thanks Charles
Am 19.05.2009 18:49 Uhr schrieb "Omke Oudeman" unter <[email protected]>:
do you have both the start up scripts checked for AI and PS in the Bridge
preferences.
And have you already tried to restart Bridge holding down option key to
refresh the preferences?
>

Hot and Controversial - Colour Management

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